He said "The lag is a little bit too high for hard core gamers". He measured it at 16ms delay compared to CRT. This is not pixel response that every manufacturer wants and declares it low. Input lag is not specified by manufacturers, and only some reviews (this included) actually measure it.As for categories, FPS is not the only category that benefits from low lag. Racing is another and I'm not talking about the NFS series where a mistake slows you down a bit (in Underground 2 a friend of mine managed to win once by riding each wall in each turn), but where a mistake ends your race (sims).Reply

I have 3 120Hz Alienware OPTX2310's with rated 3ms refresh rates. It is true that the way manufacture's measure those rates is less then accurate but since it is true of all monitors it is still a good idea if your gaming to get the fastest timings even if it turns out to be more like 5 or 6ms on a 3ms rated overall. You can tell the difference. Also I believe the 2310's even have a better gamma (mid 70's) then this AOC does which is very disappointing for an IPS panel.Reply

My 6ms Dell 2407WFP has not only been perfectly adequate for games of any kind, I've never noticed it ghost. Ever. And I'm sensitive enough to monitor weirdness that SLI microstutter pisses me off.Reply

I had one of these and I noticed some ghosting, but the main problem with them was input lag. You really want a screen with no more than 15ms input lag to be rid of issues. If you put a u2412m side by side with a 2407 and duplicate the desktop, you'd notice it simply by moving the mouse.

The old S-PVA screens never really got input lag down to acceptable levels.Reply

I've still got a 2408WFP sitting around my place, and I can definitely agree that processing lag is too high. Even my wife -- a non-techie user -- noticed it when I recently switched her to that display from an IPS panel. She thought the problem was the mouse, so I switched mice and the problem was still there. If you only ever use an S-PVA display, you may not notice what you're missing, but once you have a better reference point it becomes immediately clear that there are delays on the S-PVA panels. That said, I've never had issues with the <20ms lag; it's only when you start getting above that where it becomes noticeable (for me).Reply

The fact is, most people wouldn't be effected by this much lag, even in FPS gaming.

That being said, if you don't pay attention to the lag from each component of your system it could all add up to something that does effect your performance, so getting a monitor with lower lag can be a plus. However, if you really want lower lag in gaming, I suggest a CRT. Of course if you demand larger than 21" you can't really do that, but then I suggest gaming lag isn't your main concern, if that's the case.

(You also pretty much have to buy used, since they aren't made anymore. However, you can find CRT monitors with better quality than LCDs for less money.)

TN monitors are crap! I have one low end IPS display and I love it. It is perfect even for games! Oh, yeah, and I connect it to a laptop with ordinary TN display and do you know what? I hate looking at the laptop because of its crappy TN display!

Aoc is a long time supplier of lcd displays. I remember when they started selling their name brand monitors at staples. I just went out and bought one today to replace my dell 2005 lcd, which could not play blueray movies out of my new dell xps8300, due to hdcp compliance. My first impresion is WOW. This panel is amazing!. bright, crisp, accurate colors, easy on the eyes, no lagg, no back light bleeding that i can see, deep enough blacks, superb viewing angles, I can't tell about games because that's not my primary use but what else can you get for under $200 bucks. I compare it to the LG e-ips in the store hooked up to the same xps8300 and the AOC is a lot better in my opinion.I have it hooked up hdmi to hdmi and the adjustments are limited but all i had to do was lower the contrast a bit and stretch the screen to fit the screen in the catlyst control center. I love it!Reply

I agree. I have both a 24" 1920 x 1200 and a 23" NEC eIPS 1080P monitor next to each other The 24" inch monitor is better for everything. Maybe movies are slightly better at 1080P, but it's really only a small improvement. Everything else is better with more vertical screen space. While 1080p isn't terrible, its still a step backwards. There are still a few 1920 x 120 displays out there, and I will stick with those for now.Reply

Yah one of my screens is a 27" 16:9, and I'd say from that experience I'd hate to have a smaller screen with that format. I bought the screen in part to see if 16:9 would bug me, and it does. Unfortunately, 16:10 in that size screen would mean going to 30", and the pixel pitch is significantly larger in current 2560x1600 displays than screens like mine that are 2560x1440.

There are still 16:10 screens around (of course all 30" screens, that I'm aware of, are 16:10), and even new ones have come out; the format is far from dead. Generally though they are more expensive. I think the price increase is well worth it, and if people would stop buying cheaper 16:9 screens, then maybe the manufacturers would pay more attention to 16:10.

Laptop screens are the worst, these days. 16:9 is in my opinion, atrocious on them, and part of the reason I want 17" on a laptop is because of that format.

This comes up every review, but I feel the need to comment regardless. 16:10 panels will still exist, but they're going to continue to be a niche market. With 16:9 LCD panels, that enables manufacturers to use them for computers, laptops, and TVs. This leads to larger yields, lower prices, and cheaper panels for everyone. I also prefer 16:10 instead of 16:9, but that 16:10 panel can often cost twice as much as the 16:9 and makes the value proposition of it much lower for most people. For my laptop (Macbook Air, 16x9 ratio) I've wound up moving the dock to the side of the screen to save vertical space, and if I had a Windows machine with a 16x9 ratio I would probably do the same.

I like 16:10 but I also realize that most people I know would rather pay half as much for a 16:9 screen, or buy two, than have that extra bit of screen at the bottom, and due to the manufacturing economics, I don't expect this to change soon.Reply

I saw a samsung LED TN panel the other week, and the color reproduction looked phenomenal! is IPS irrelevent these days with OLED just around the corner? If they have'nt picked up by now, i imagine OLED will completely make them obsolete.Reply

OLED is likely coming out later this year for home theater displays, but since that will be around $8,000 for a 55" display, affordable desktop displays are not going to be coming anytime soon. Perhaps in half a decade we will see them, but for the moment it's a technology with low yields, but very high performance, that will mostly be sold as a high margin home theater device I imagine. There is a lot that can still be done to improve desktop LCDs before OLED comes (such as backlit LEDs instead of edge lit, and RGB LEDs like the HP DreamColor display to provide true 30-bit color displays instead of 24-bit), and OLED might start to put pressure on vendors that can't produce it (only Samsung and LG at the moment can make OLED sets) that will need to keep up.

IPS certainly isn't dead just because of TN with LED backlights. You still have the issues of TN (worse color fidelity, poor viewing angles), though the new 120Hz TN displays are very nice for gaming. With eIPS closing the price gap, it wouldn't surprise me if eIPS takes over the budget, general purpose display area and 120Hz TN takes over for gaming.Reply

Is there another aspect besides the lag numbers that you would like to see improved? We haven't reviewed the Dell U2312HM that you linked to, so comparing any of our lag numbers to those would be an invalid comparison. We did review the Dell U2311H, and our lag was 8ms, compared to their finding of 10ms, so very close results. I'm working on finding a better way to measure lag, as it's one of the harder things to test I find.

@cheinonenOh thanks for noticing my comment. I only linked the Dell U2312HM to show that some e-IPS can be fine for "hard core" gaming since there was some general complaining going on about lag on e-IPS being no good for gaming.

As far as monitor review improvements, Maybe Pixel responsiveness, ghosting and motion blur comparisons. How do Movies look ? how about really dark scenes? That is all i can think of .Reply

I'm working on something for motion blur, but that might still be a bit further away. Pixel responsiveness will come into play there as well, as the more responsive the pixels, the less blur will be visible. Of course lag can still exist even with improved pixel response time, but that's why I'd like to be able to measure all of them.

I will look into finding some good shadow detail material for movie testing going forward, but those are also very subjective as well. I'd prefer to be able to produce a test chart that measures gray swatches from 0-32 or so, which we can then chart compared to the 2.2 gamma we are targeting. Calibrating the grayscale at levels that low can be troublesome, as meters have more and more trouble reading values that low, but we can measure the gamma reasonably well with the i1Display Pro, which has more impact on shadow detail anyway.Reply

The Dell has more input lag, lower resolution, and no HDMI inputs or speakers, but has a very nice, adjustable stand which I like on my desktop (I can put it high enough to get over my speakers), as well as the ability to rotate to portrait mode for document editing. I didn't do a head-to-head as I'm finding the resolution on the Dell to be very limiting at this point, and would much prefer a 27" or 30" display for my desktop. I would have been fine with replacing the Dell with the AOC for a general purpose display, as for photo editing I have a different display I use, and I have a 24" Sony CRT sitting here for hard core gaming if I need no lag.Reply

My mainstay monitor is the Dell 2408 although I have a couple of IPS monitors (U2310) which are calibrated for photo-edit work. The AOC i2353 is a great buy at the price-point. The base can be wall mounted (there are locating holes in the base) however the base contains the controls and power supply connector, so you can't omit the base altogether.

The lack of vertical adjustment means that for most usages you will need a shelf or a couple of phone directories to elevate the monitors to an ergonomic height. I also note the front bezel on the monitors is flimsy and has rippled slightly so there is a gap between bezel and the display.

When I'm working on documents I like to rotate the Dell monitors. Of course the AOC has no rotate function but with the narrower monitor a rotate isn't as effective as with the Dell. I also note the AOC does not have a DVI-D to HDMI cable included in the box (when will people stop shipping stupid SVGA cables?).

Gaming? I play Portal 2 and Serious Sam III and I don't have a problem with lag - but I'm old, so younger people might see this as a problem.

This monitor needed calibration because out of the box it was blue biased. Once calibrated the results were excellent - I use the monitors for web design and video. I also found that some computers (about 30%) really needed the profile loaded from the AOC disk in order to properly setup the display.

I had never heard of AOC before this monitor, however I am suitably impressed. The power brick runs, at most, just mildly warm to the touch regardless of usage. So I will be buying more of these.Reply

You see AOC products listed often by etailers, and their price is attractive but I'm guessing most people are like me and shy away from them because, well, "cheap is cheap". Sometimes, though, it's not cheap, it's inexpensive, and that appears to be the case here.

If I recall correctly, AOC had a pretty well regarded CRT business back 10-15 years ago, so I've always associated them with quality, though up until now their LCD's were a bit of an unknown to me.Reply

"IPS has never been the first choice for people when it comes to gaming due to slower reponse times than a TN display" - I think the 60Hz limitation, which applies for IPS and TN, is the primary limiting factor. GTG is 8ms vs 2ms, while new frames come every 16.7ms.

"The lag is a little bit too high for hard core gamers" - 1 frame is arguably tolerable even for the hardcore. And if it's not acceptable for someone, then I'd say the only thing acceptable for that person is a CRT at >80Hz.

-1 for 16:9. :P

btw I had to register a new account with "annnonymouscoward" instead of "annonymouscoward", since anandtech spontaneously decided I'm a spammer.Reply

There are 120Hz TN displays available now, and we recently reviewed one from Samsung which you can find. With gaming, I found the 120Hz refresh to be really nice and make a noticeable difference in how smooth the image was compared to 60Hz. There are no IPS panels available that do 120Hz that I know of, but since you can get 120Hz HDTVs that use IPS panels (they don't accept 120Hz signals, but can display 720p60 frame packed, which is basically 120Hz by a different name) I'd hope that desktop displays using this aren't far away.

Do people think that 1 frame of lag is the acceptable cut-off point then? Since there are displays that can do 10ms or less, I tend to think that we should aim for > 0.5 frames of lag as an ideal, but that's also harder to find. I play some games, but I'm not good at FPS games anymore, so my saying that I found 1 frame of lag acceptable is much different than someone who is actually good finding that acceptable.Reply

> Do people think that 1 frame of lag is the acceptable cut-off point then?

I'm extremely sensitive to lag--so much that I'm turned off from every Droid phone I've ever used. And I've owned a 3007WFP-HC for years, which averages 11.5ms of lag according to digitalversus. I've never perceived lag on it, and I play FPS. I'd never buy a monitor with 30ms lag. The general public can't notice 50ms lag.

I find 60Hz to be the huge limiting factor in FPS's, since getting an update every 16.7ms isn't enough information when trying to target on the fly.

I think there's a sizable market for premium new displays, if some company would have the sense to make them. Instead, all we get is crap. They take monitor tech we've had for 6 years, reduce 3", make it 16:9, and maybe even glossy. There has been virtually zero improvement to the 30" IPS models that came out 6 years ago. I want a 36", X-IPS, WUVDIQXGA, with a polarizer filer, 80Hz minimum. No more 16:9 60Hz garbage.Reply

I've been ogling IPS displays for years, but always walked away with one thing in mind...sticker shock!

Can you Anandtech staff and the readers recommend an IPS display for the budget-conscious? I understand they're going to be more expensive than their run-of-the-mill partners, but I'm speaking in relative terms.

It wouldn't be for professional use, but rather gaming and video goodness!

These aren't 120 Hz IPS displays. They use circular polarization, much like the Viewsonic monitor we recently reviewed, so each eye gets a 1920x540 image when running at 60Hz. If they were 120Hz we would certainly be interested, but it looks to be a passive 3D display, albeit with IPS instead of TN.Reply

When I read these monitor reviews I often see a great deal of info on color calibration, contrast etc. but would it be possible to add a new metric to the reviews?

I am specifically interested in text clarity and eye strain.How would a given monitor compare for reading/heavy text usage?

As a developer I spend an incredible amount of time in front of the screen. I'm not sure what metrics correlate to a "good" viewing experience but a test around such criteria would be fantastic for the office workers and monitor jockies among us.

I have 7+ diff. monitor models at my office. And have found that some monitors are much easier on the eyes than others. We have a particular 22inch Dell IPS (about 5 years old now) that I would rate the best, but can't tell you what qualities provide such a comfortable viewing experience. There are other IPS monitors that do not match it, its pixel density is avg among our models, etc.

I have two of these monitors which I use for C# and asp.net development along with web design. My gold standard are my Dell PVA 24 inch monitors (I now have six 2408 monitors in total) and I also have 2 Dell IPS monitors (U2410's). I reject TN monitors as unusable for every day programming and design work.

I was concerned that text would appear fuzzy because these are e-IPS monitors, but in daily use I see no significant difference between this monitor and my U2410's.

The LED back-light does provide higher contrast but after calibration I still prefer my U2410's. For programming I like to rotate my monitor display by 90 degrees, and I usually have 3 of these lined up side-by-side or two in the vertical and one in the horizontal attitude. Unfortunately the AOC monitor cannot be rotated and does not have height adjustment. However the monitors run incredibly cool and I am using them for web development.

My criteria (for work usage) is:

Viewing angleBanding and color accuracyErgonomics (adjustment potential)Eye strain and headache issues from long term use (>18 hours per day)

Relative to my Dell monitors, the AOC scores 9, 8, 3, 10 respectively. Against this, the best 120Hz TN monitor scores 2, 7, 9, 2. So I would say they are worth the price bump over TN for office and extended work usage.

I really wish they came as 24 inch monitors but on the odd occasion I watch media content the AOC is close to ideal. I have no ghosting on my displays (I use only the 2 hdmi connectors of course).

I still prefer my 2408's for day-to-day use, and until the AOC's arrived I considered the U2410 / Z24 to be the ideal compromise monitors. Despite ergonomic limitations the AOC is an excellent display and I will be buying more of them (I have 3 separate work stations in daily use). They set the minimum for acceptable workstation display IMUO.Reply

But I've had some problems, I have my second one now and I cannot get any display to show up on HDMI, I have tried 2 different cables and 3 different computers (two intel HD3000 and one ATOM/ION netbook) and I get nothing. I get output on VGA but not HDMI. AOC engineer told me I had a dud to RMA it. I did and my replacement is here doing the exact same thing. I need this monitor for a time sensitive deadline project and not having the extra screen space is hurting me.

No a single word on the net about problems with this monitor. But something us up for me to get two ;(Reply

After a day of tinkering I was able to figure it out. Its a windows 7/Intel HD driver issue. Default settings on Win7 Display modes would not allow it to be detected until i deleted all drivers for display and really messed around with the 'projector/external display settings'. Now it shows up.

Hi,I want to buy this monitor but some say it has blur in FPS which I play all the time. but I really like this monitor is it possible to adjust the vertical and horizontal refresh lines to prevent blur ?

please advise from people have this monitor I dont have another IPS choice near my place.Reply

Hi! I've been looking for an external monitor for my MacBook Pro 13-inch Early 2011. Would this be a good monitor for my computer? I'm looking for a monitor that will display extremely crisp text, display accurate colours (vibrant colours) and doesn't lag when watching videos. I don't want ghosting or any bleeding either. Would this be a good monitor?Reply